“Tech­nol­o­gists have called 2016 the year of vir­tu­al real­i­ty…While the biggest chunk of the esti­mat­ed $80 bil­lion mar­ket for VR and so-called aug­ment­ed real­i­ty will be fed by the demand for video game tech, the sec­ond biggest share will go to health-care appli­ca­tions.

“What clin­i­cal VR pro­vides is the oppor­tu­ni­ty to put a patient into a world that is dif­fer­ent from where they’re sit­ting — one that is designed to have some ther­a­peu­tic ingre­di­ent built into it,” said Albert “Skip” Riz­zo, direc­tor for med­ical vir­tu­al real­i­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern California’s Insti­tute for Cre­ative Technologies…Rizzo said per­haps the most impor­tant advan­tage of VR ther­a­py is that it low­ers the bar­ri­er of access to men­tal health care for patients. Patients who aren’t com­fort­able speak­ing direct­ly to a ther­a­pist because of stig­ma or fear of judg­ment, may be more will­ing to ask for help through a com­put­er.”

About SharpBrains

As seen in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC News, CNN, Reuters and more, SharpBrains is an independent market research firm tracking health and performance applications of brain science.